Commentary and analysis to persuade people to become socialist and to act for themselves, organizing democratically and without leaders, to bring about a world of common ownership and free access. We are solely concerned with building a movement of socialists for socialism. We are not reformists with a programme of policies to patch up capitalism.

Friday, June 12, 2015

The Knock-On Effect From Ebola: Unemployment

Liberia’s Ebola outbreak has been over for a while, so what has happened
to all those burial teams, contact tracers, Ebola Treatment Unit health
workers, community mobilisers, ambulance drivers? What are they doing
now?
The answer is not a lot. The majority of the estimated 20,000 or so
workers and volunteers who risked their lives during the year-long fight
are unable to find work, largely due to lingering stigma and fears
about the virus.Liberia was declared Ebola-free in May, but after almost 5,000 deaths
and more than 10,000 cases, the country is still in trauma. Borders
have reopened and trade is beginning to pick up, but the social and
psychological scars take longer to heal.

“People are still afraid of us,” 44-year-old Morris Walker, who worked as a contact tracer, told IRIN.

“They don’t want to employ us because they feel we have some sort of
disease and could infect them. But this is far from the fact.”Before the outbreak, Walker had been working for many years as a
waiter in a local restaurant. But when he tried to pick up again from
where he’d left off, he was knocked back.“The manager bluntly told me that my services were not needed because
he heard that I was working with the burial teams,” Walker told IRIN.
“The manager said that if he takes me back, most of his customers might
not come back to the restaurant.” Walker has since applied for a number of jobs, but hasn’t had any luck. He is not alone.

There are no official figures, but several organisations, including
local community service NGO Gratis, say that between 50 and 70 percent
of former Ebola response workers are currently unemployed, particularly
in and around hard-hit Margibi county.